Tuesday, May 1, 2007

I don't want to say that tonight's dinner was an unmitigated disaster....but it came fairly close.

I was so excited last week, as I discovered that the Barnes and Noble near our house stocks both Donna Hay and Delicious magazines. I didn't think I would be able to get my hands on these, so I spent the entire weekend going through all the recipes in them, trying to work out which ones I wanted to make first. I saw the feature in Donna Hay (volume 31) for making tomato sauce and decided to give it a try, followed by the pan-fried chicken and zucchini salad.

Well, the sauce turned out fine, nice and tasty....although I am not sure it was any more tasty than the one I usually make from canned crushed tomatoes. This may be because the tomatoes aren't fully in season here, so this may be better later on in the summer. But it was the chicken and zucchini salad that was not what I was expected.

The problem was, the recipe confused me. It started off saying to pre-heat the oven, but then never mentioned using it. I think the recipe must have had something missing, but I wasn't sure what it was. They never mentioned cooking the zucchini, so I thought perhaps that was supposed to be roasted in the oven....but I really wasn't sure.

Anyway, what it boils down to is that I didn't really follow the recipe fully, as I wanted it to be a warm salad, because of the cooked chicken and decided to pan fry the zucchini as well as the chicken. This worked out fine. I also added the tomato sauce to the pan for the last minute to warm it through and this was not in the original recipe.

The outcome was a pretty tasty salad, that was not really a salad...but I probably won't make it ever again. Rich actually really liked it and said he would definitely request it again, which I was very surprised about. I decided to add some grilled queso blanco on the side, which gave a nice salty little kick, but again, this wasn't in the recipe.

I have to say, that after all the hype about Donna Hay and loving reading the magazine, I was so looking forward to a simple, great tasting, healthy recipe....but alas, it was not to be. It is probably my fault, but I don't think the recipe was very clear due to what I believe was a typo.

I am not posting the recipe, but if you have the last issue of Donna Hay (31) you can find it in there. I hope it works better for you, if you try it!!!

2 comments:

lynn
said...

Oh, sad! I hate frustrating recipes that forget to tell you steps or assume that you know what to do with that 1/2 cup of shredded carrots. What you ended up with looks quite tasty, though. You've got wicked kitchen skills to turn a bad/ frustrating recipe into something your husband would request again.